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Priest PvP guide
An important thing to note when going up against all classes (with the exception of warriors in beserker rage) is to fear immediately. With the common use of PvP fear trinkets, making your opponent use their cooldown on the trinket ASAP is vital. Rogue For most Rogue duels, the secret is simply staying alive at the beginning. Keep in mind that rogues are capable of dealing ridiculous amounts of burst damage immediately after leaving Stealth. Consequently, keep a Power Word: Shield on yourself to absorb some initial damage. Try to cast it early so that you can beat the cool down should you have to Flash Heal immediately after a stun, that is likely to happen soon after the Rogue's opening moves. Helpful talents here include improved Power Word: Shield and Healing Focus. Once you are able to use Psychic Scream the Rogue, the duel should be yours to win. Keep Shadow Word: Pain on the Rogue and he will be unable to Vanish and return to Stealth effectively. Keep your back away from the Rogue if possible and use Renew on yourself. If you have Mind Flay, using it on Rogues can make it harder to maneuver around you and get to your back. At level 66, rogues gain Cloak of Shadows, an ability similar in appearance to shadowform. Do not try to attack the rogue as long as it is on! Simply try to heal through and hope you will be able to fear him afterwards. Warrior Use Psychic Scream as much as possible in a dueling environment. Keep Shadow Word: Pain on the Warrior and Renew on yourself. Use Power Word: Shield on yourself to immediately begin casting interruptible damage spells, while also taking advantage of times when the Warrior is under the effect of Psychic Scream. You should be able to beat any equal-leveled Warrior unless your opponent is noticeably better geared. A Warrior is most likely to use Berserker Rage once in a while to make your Psychic Scream useless. Do not waste the cool down, just try healing (hopefully you've got Healing Focus) while it's on and keep Shadow Word: Pain on him. The ability to keep a mental count down of spell durations is helpful with a Warrior's Berserker Rage. As soon as you think it's gone, Psychic Scream and use Holy Fire or Mind Blast, depending on how much time you've got and if Mind Blast is cooling down. Pay attention to which stance the warrior is in, Battle Stance is common for an initial Charge, but when they switch to Berserker Stance (noticeable by the large Dwarf head) he will have Berserker Rage which breaks all Fear and Incapacitate effects and shares the same cool down as Psychic Scream. An experienced warrior will try to strafe around your in order to avoid your spells. Avoid relying on smite/mind blast unless they are at a distance. Throw a vampiric embrace on them, followed by a SW:P (and Vampiric Touch then Mind Flay if you're shadow spec'ed). Keep your shield up and a win is almost guaranteed. Keeping Power Word: Shield on you also prevents the warrior from gaining the rage he needs to hurt you. Priest Equal-leveled Priest duels can often be very close if priests are of similar spec. However, your choice of talents will factor greatly into the equation should you be in the higher levels. The obvious favorite will be the fully Shadow specced priest, with an arsenal of talents like Silence and Shadowform. However, Discipline specced priests do stand a chance, especially with the inclusion of talents like Improved Mana Burn. Often priests will spend their time Mana Burning each other (otherwise you'll be pounding on him while he simply heals through it), with some mix of Psychic Scream and Power Word: Shielding going on (keeping in mind Power Word: Shield absorbs the damage from Mana Burn, but your Mana is still drained). Mana Burn is a long casting spell and a well timed Psychic Scream can be invaluable, giving you extended opportunities for a "free" window to cast. Another good idea would be to use a warrior/rogue's tactics and strafe around your opponent, disrupting things such as smite, mind blast, and mana burn. Remember to Dispel liberally to get rid of Power Word: Fortitude, Renew and Power Word: Shield, along with any and all Magical debuffs the Priest may hit you with. However should you find yourself out of Mana or silenced, things can turn rather sour. Warlock Besides the Shaman, this is perhaps the hardest duel you'll find. Equally geared Holy Priests don't stand much of a chance since the Felhunter is most likely to counter your heals. However, Shadow Priests do pose a certain threat to the warlock. Felhunter, Demonology: Try to use Psychic Scream on them both early and have your Insignia of the Alliance/Horde ready. 5 points in Unbreakable Will will help you to go through the Fear and Spell Lock. Make sure you Power Word: Shield AFTER the Felhunter devours your buffs so it will last long enough for you to absorb some damage; some people like to give themselves all available buffs so the Felhunter Devours some of the more useless ones (if you're lucky), such as Touch of Weakness and Inner Fire, which wouldn't normally cross your mind as anti-Warlock buffs. Before the real damage, the Warlock will probably DoT and Fear you. If you're a Dwarf or a Human, use Fear Ward or Feedback right after the first Devour Magic. If you can time your Silence and Dispel (to get rid of his Shadow Ward or the DoTs he put on you), it's basically about burst damage and keeping yourself healed. Felguard, Demonology: There is no easy way of doing this. Equally geared shadow priests and warlocks have 50% chance of defeating each other according to pure luck and gear. The felguard will do extremely heavy damage if ignored so try to fear it asap. If you get a chance, get close to the warlock and fear them both. Having shield and inner fire up is essential for you will receive heavy damage. Cast it early and be ready to cast it again after a good timed Silence. Succubus, Destruction: The commonly used tactic would be to Seduce you and then Soul Fire. Since Seduce (which some people forget can be removed by Will of the Forsaken, although it might be a good idea to save it for a Fear) is a short range spell, try to avoid it and open the duel yourself with a DoT, Vampiric Embrace and Mind Blast. If you're lucky enough to Blackout, use it to get close and use Psychic Scream on the Warlock. Save Silence for after the Fear because that's usually when Death Coil will be the spell of choice and that's when it gets ugly. Be aware of the new 2.0.1 Affliction spell Unstable Affliction when using Dispel on yourself or others. The damage you take after dispelling scales with the Warlock's +damage equipment, and is also capable of a critical strike. If you have the proper Shadow gear, you might consider putting a single DoT on the Succubus and let the damage kill it while you take care of the Warlock. Mage As soon as the duel starts the most important thing to do is to put Shadow Word: Pain on the Mage, Power Word: Shielding yourself before the duel starts is a good idea. Continue with a Psychic Scream and then Mind Blast, by now you should spam Flash Heal on yourself and Renew. Make sure to keep Shadow Word: Pain on the Mage and a Power Word: Shield on yourself at all times. Shadow Priests: Mages are your best match-up throughout the classes, between Silence and Psychic Scream they will be hard pressed to get many spells off against you. Initially the main tactic versus Mages is to use Silence as the duel counts down, this leaves you an opening for Mind Blast and Shadow Word: Pain, run forward towards the Mage as you Shadow Word: Pain, you want to get next to them before Silence wears off for a Psychic Scream, Mages may try to run briefly to avoid the Psychic Scream, but eventually they will have to attempt a cast so stay close. Once Psychic Scream hits it's usually smart to Power Word: Shield and Renew as you are gonna eat some nukes soon, finish out the Psychic Scream with Mind Blast or Mind Flay, once the Mage regains control usually it is far too late to recover, keep with the Mind Blast and Mind Flay, it should be over shortly. Discipline Priests: PW:S. After that, SW:P them as soon as possible as they are going to polymorph you. Spam dispel magic until you recieve "nothing to dispel." This will reduce a fair amount of their mana pool and also remove any bonus resistance they have via mage shields. After this, Mana Burn. If you don't have imp. mana burn it's fine. PW:S, Redot and mana burn some more until they are close to 5% mana. once they are here, if they are still alive from your reflective shield, dots and mana burns, do some DD (Mind Blast, Holy Fire or Smite, Mind Blast). don't bother to Mana Burn below 5% as their spellcasting will reduce them anyway and you don't want to waste mana on a non full effect, although it can give you an extra advantage. Some useful info/things to watch out for: -If they get close, fear them. if they are fire specced theyre probably trying to dragon's breath you (which is nasty). Don't bother to fear them unless they get close to you, as you want to keep your fear free. keep it handy in case they blink in on you. -Keep them dotted at all times. the last thing you want is for them to sheep you and evocate. If they evocate while dotted they may get some mana back but the damage will interrupt the evocate. -Make sure your PW:S is up at the start of the fight, and as much as possible during. You don't want to get hit with a pyroblast without it. -Throwing a holy fire in at the start of your DD should be fine, but only at the start when they are going to be getting low on mana. Remember, they have mana stones and Holy Fire takes forever to cast. Druid In general you want to act as already described on this page, in correspondence to which form the Druid is taking. The Druid has to change back to humanoid form to heal, so it is very important to Psychic Scream or Silence him the moment he leaves Cat, Bear, Dire Bear or Moonkin Form. The Druid can dish out some damage without spending any Mana (and are immune to Mana effecting spells such as Mana Burn) so saving Mana is very important. Spells such as Holy Fire are very useful here simply because of their small price of Mana. Hunter I have found hunters to be one of the easiest classes to kill. They have no way to heal themselves so be sure to keep SW:Pain up at all times. When facing a hunter solo, pop on PW:S on yourself and then SW:Pain on the hunter. Dont worry about their pet. Focus on the hunter. I then try to rush in towards the hunter and fear him along with his pet. The basic strategy here is: keep PW:S up at all times. Fear the pet when it gets close to you, keep SW:Pain on the hunter, and nuke the crap out of him from close range (if you can) or from a distance (if you are slowed, dont waste time trying to get close to him). Hunters do have the ability to do a massive amount of ranged damage but do not have many hit points, so a priest's ability to shield will win the fight any day. Try to take down the hunter as soon as possible because viper sting will drain your mana very fast. An uber geared hunter with the ability to crit on almost every shot does pose a problem for priests. Since the Burning Crusade, Hunters have a new anti-caster ability in Silencing Shot, a 3-second silence on a 20-second cooldown. Incapacitate or Fear them if possible when you need to heal, and keep in mind that they can't silence you if you aren't in line of sight. Paladin In general, A Holy Priest vs a Paladin will for the most part be an endurance battle. The priest will probably have a hard time beating a paladin because the paladin can keep up sustained dps, while the priests mana pool will eventually become empty. A Shadow Priest can bring down a Paladin quite easily with some good burst dps. Keep in mind the paladin can refill health with Lay on Hands (once per hour) and use Divine Shield to scrap all of your debuffs and DoTs, not to mention the invulnerability, use that time to heal/bandage if you have to. You can only kill a paladin once he has used up both the Divine Shield and Lay on Hands abilitys. So force him into using them, trying to avoid letting them use their normal heals, while conserving some mana for the end of the fight. Start the duel in shadowform. Paladins in duels use mostly 2h swords with slow speed. Jumping around in circles when you can will help to avoid melee strikes. Cast Vampiric Embrace, SW:Pain and touch/hex of weakness on them. When they stun you with crusaders hit, expect to eat some damage. Right after this you should fear him right away, if you're an Undead Priest use Devouring Plague to get back some health or put up PW:Shield (don't waste the mana on Devouring Plague if there's chance the Paladin could use Divine Shield, or cleanse). If you start to get really low on health dont hesitate to remove shadowform and cast a large heal on yourself and do a portion of the duel while not in shadowform. Only go back into shadowform if your current mana allows and you're at near full health. During fear you can either manaburn, nuke or mindflay. If you want to conserve mana then you can shoot with a wand. In that situation (paladin is full of DoTs and debuff and getting low on health) they will panic and use Divine Shield, heal up or even use lay on hands. So at this point you are basically as if you started out new, but with only one half the mana. Redo debuff, Vampiric Embrace, DoT, touch/hex of weakness while trying to avoid getting in melee range, or being in front of the paladin. Shoot wand, melee, redo DoT, etc. You will probably need to save some mana to finish him off. If you see that the paladin would dispel your SW:P, try casting a rank 1 one. He won't really see how much damage it will deal and he will basicly lose more mana than you trying to dispel it and the shadow vulnerability. Another strategy you can use, which works very well if you are a holy, disc, or any combination of both. Shadow priests might not have to do this if their burst dps is high enough, but it's still a good strategy. Sometimes you will have to force the Paladin into using his long cooldown spells (Divine Shield, Lay on Hands, etc). However, if the paladin has no mana to do so in the first place, this isn't a problem. Once you get a hold of the situation, do a quick shield + fear immediatly followed by a series of mana burns until the paladin has 0 mana. Then quickly do a couple dispels to get rid of any buffs the paladin may have. A paldin with no mana or buffs is like a disarmed warrior with no rage. Now you can do DoTs and a couple mind blasts. Mana regeneration is inevitable, so you will have to do a couple more mana burns. Try to keep the paladin at 0 mana. The paladin can cast Lay on Hands even with 1 mana, so this is almost unstopable. Just continue using mana burn, DoTs, and fear (with the occasional mind blast and PW:Sheild), and the Paladin wont stand a chance. Also, Holy Fire is a very useful ability in this fight. Paladins are most likely to use shadow aura so they'll never see it coming. It's also a VERY cheap spell so you could use it after mana burning him to 0 and still have some spare mana to heal. Oh and keep an eye out for the paladin's attacks: If he casts blessing of wisdom on himself, it'll be a lot harder to mana burn him. Always remember to dispel EVERY judgement he does on you. Shaman A good shaman is hard to kill by a priest, albeit far from impossible. The most important thing to know is that a shaman without mana is a dead shaman. Shamans have low mana pools, horrible efficiency, and no way to regenerate mana. Therefore, Mana Burn becomes an incredibly potent spell. But it needs to be used carefully. Shaman have 2 sources of DPS. Shocks and auto-attack, which can proc Windfury. A smart shaman will not spam shocks, so their damage is somewhat lowered, but since all their utility is in their shocks, this means that casting might not be the easiest thing. Purge is the third offensive ability they have, and it is generally used judiciously. A shaman will purge the PW:S almost immediately upon it being cast, as well as renew. Purge is fairly expensive (140 mana), and gets resisted a lot (over 50% of the time). This means that sometimes, the shaman is forced to spend 500 mana, to remove a rank 1 renew. Use this to your advantage. If a shaman starts to cast a lightning spell (his hands glow white-blue, instead of green), that's the best time to cast a shield on you. It will most likely absorb the spell, and it will be followed by a purge, and you just wasted 7-800 of his mana (with a bit more of yours, but that's important, you have more). Fear should be negated by their tremor totem, but luckily, the latter rarely works. It's based on a system of pulses, which go every 3-5 seconds. However, it might take quite a few pulses for it to work, while your SW:Pain and mana burn deplete both life and mana. Tremor totems are cheap, and the shaman will drop them a lot, which is good, because that means no earthbind or +STR totems are being dropped. Totems also have a short range, so running out is a good idea. If he/she plants totems, grounding or otherwise, you should not waste time attacking them. Just get out of the range of them, this is much more effective than wasting attacking or healing time. This is not applicable in a duel due to the range limit but should be utilized in every other situation. You need to get away from their tremor totem in order to fear them. Shadow priests have silence, which is a great tool against any shaman. Silencing a heal, and applying a couple more mana burns, and then casting a fear, and you should be able to down the shaman very quickly. There are many healing-based shamans out there with very little dps but with the healing abilities of a professional resto druid. Do NOT underestimate them! If they start casting a heal (green hands) with a grounding totem down, don't try to destroy it nor use silence on the shaman regardlessly. Use Psychic Scream for the grounding totem will be useless. Don't worry about tremor totems. The important thing is that you stopped him from healing... for now. If you are too far away for Psychic Scream, run into Silence range while hitting rank 1 SW:P. The totem can only absorb one spell every 10 seconds, and the global cooldown should be finished before their heal is, if they used their big one. Even if they chose to use two Lesser healing waves instead of one big one, interrupting the second heal will still help. Category:Priests Category:PvP Category:Tactics